Product description

In the Blink of an Eye is celebrated film editor Walter Murch's vivid, multifaceted, thought -- provoking essay on film editing. Starting with what might be the most basic editing question -- Why do cuts work? -- Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers his unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch reconsiders and completely revises his popular first edition's lengthy meditation on digital editing (which accounts for a third of the book's pages) in light of the technological changes that have taken place in the six years since its publication.

Customer reviews

I've been looking for a long time for a really useful book on film editing. Eisenstein's theoretic lessons aside this is probabily the most resourceful book on how to edit a movie.
It's hard to say what are the rules of editing and how to do it in particular situations but Murch does it quite good in only showing you a few points that can be good to lean on when searching for the right rhythm. He supports his theories with examples from movies he's been working on (Apocalypse now, English patient, etc.) so you can quickly get the idea what he's talking about.
The book also covers what the working space of a film editor should be like, how the editor and the director should cooperate, the history (and possibly future) of editing and quite a few of small but very useful little tips for editing work-flow.
This is not a book that will teach you technical knowledge of video editing (if you want to be an editor you should know how to use your program, right?) but the philosophy of making cuts and the flow of a movie.
I certainly recommend it to everyone interested in this field.